Kaeru
by Natsu chan
Summary: What was Hiko thinking as everyone waited for Kenshin, Sano and Aoshi to return at the end of the Kyoto saga?
1. Chapter 1

Kaeru means to return or to come home in Japanese so I thought it was fitting as a title for this piece.

Authors notes: This one shot was written for the Meiji tales May challenge. It is linked to another fic of mine, (Snowfall) although it is set much later near the end of the Kyoto arc in fact. You don't need to read Snowfall to understand this piece as it's been written as a stand alone one shot.

The usual disclaimers apply. I don't own RK which is probably just as well really.

* * *

The wounded are bandaged and resting, and still even as the light fades there's no sign of the baka at all. The light filters out of the sky in streams of colour interspersed with torn up ribbons of cloud. The moon appears a pale disc in a pale pink sky and there's still no sign of him. The police try to round everyone up and move them on to somewhere safer, but it's futile. Until the baka returns, no one will stir a step. I look at the two young women sitting bandaged and draped in borrowed blankets, only a year in age between them but a life time in other ways. The younger one fidgets, pausing in her silent fidgeting now and then to talk to Kaoru or yell at the boy. The boy in his turn sits quietly due to pain and exhaustion but is unable to resist the urge to bait the dark haired ninja girl now and then. I can't say I blame him she reacts so violently. Her eyes blaze with indignation and she leaps from her seat in a far from lady like way.

Kaoru sits between them smiling faintly, her very blue eyes on the road, her slim fingers curled around a cup of hot tea. In the chatter and laughter that follows the sibling like bickering of the other two, she is quiet and still. Outwardly composed but inwardly she is undoubtedly worried, but then so am I. I look at her the deep blue eyes and long black hair at her small slim frame, to look at her you wouldn't think she'd have the metal to follow Kenshin all the way from Tokyo. But she did. I glance up the road doing my best to radiate a quiet calm, while inside a nervous uncertainty gnaws away at me with all the persistence of a mouse though cheese. If he doesn't come back this small brave determined young woman will be very unhappy indeed, I told him as much the baka.

The light keeps fading, the shadows lengthen, time slows to a crawl. The moon slides a little higher, the sun a little lower and still we watch the road. The chatter stills, the young ones fall silent only the broken building around us creaks in the breeze. _'Come on you baka.'_ It seems as if the whole world is centred upon that road. It gets darker still and the breeze slaps my cloak, the cloak that by rights should be Kenshin's around my boots. Kaoru peers down into her now cold tea little lines of anxiety appearing at the corner of her eyes. I suppress a smile she isn't devastatingly beautiful, pretty but not beautiful in the way his wife was. Yet her spirit is vital and strong, lovely and open. She loves the baka so, if only he'd stop punishing himself he could be more than happy. I look up at the sky. The stars have started to twinkle distant pin points of light in a dark silk sky and I wish most reverently that I had a bottle of sake. How many nights have I spent under the stars, sake in hand my mood swinging between morose and philosophical? Then I become aware of them, and so does she.

"Kenshin!"

They rush forward, surging like rapids over the road engulfing the trio in a rising tide of relief and delight. I hang back standing beside the old man, something cold griping my insides.

"Kenshin!" Her voice has lost its wonderful lightness, fear is creeping in and her tone is so soft. Everyone jostles forward in response. A tsunami of concern.

"Everyone just stop!" They back off a little and I push forward striding towards the three men and the clearly frightened girl.

"Kenshin." Softer still, pleading.

"It's useless Jou chan." The young man supporting the baka looks at her kindly his voice soft with a combination of kindness and weariness. He backs up a step and jerks his body up defensively at my approach. The baka drags against him limp as over cooked rice, covered in blood and completely unconscious. I reach out to take him and the boy shuffles back a few steps his eyes alight though he hasn't the strength left to stop me. The other one, the tall silent man I recognise as the famous prodigy of the Oniwabanshuu, regards me coldly, his body language radiating a cold defensive threat. One he has no strength left to carry out. They're both too hurt, too spent to pose me any threat but they're loyalty and spirits remain undaunted. Do you know you baka how much people love and respect you? Do you realise that they would use the last remnants of their strength to protect you? Yet you only see your unworthiness, baka denshi that you are.

"It's all right he's Himura's Shishou!"

The tension slips away, though they both regard me cautiously. I take my baka denshi out of the boy's hands. He's heavy despite his size, all bone and muscle but very cold. I pull the tattered remains of his ridiculous pink kimono around him. It was old before but I think it's finally reached the end of its useful life. I try not to look at him too closely or I might see the broken exhausted child from all those years ago. Slim fingers brush against him anxiously. I look down at his face he's almost 30 yet some how he still looks as if he's barely reached adulthood. A man with a child's face, and an old man's eyes.

"Where's Kenshin's sakabatou?"

"His new one? He hasn't lost it already?"

"Kaoru?"

"I don't know. I can't find it." She sounds as disinterested as I feel. I just want to get him out of here, out of here to someplace safe and warm. Even after that fight on the mountains all those years ago, he didn't look quite as bad as this.

"I have it." It's the first thing Shinomori has said and it's said so quietly that it takes a moment or two for the boy and the ninja girl to register it. They swing round to look at him and I make my escape striding off with Kenshin's limp body in my arms. I snatch up a blanket as I walk past the bench where the two girls and the boy were sitting only minutes ago and pull it around Kenshin's cold body. Some how an arm slips free from the blanket it swings against my leg a limp dead weight. The boy scurries up to me and peers at Kenshin his face pale in the strengthening moonlight.

"He'll be useless for days." No one says anything but a grim tension settles over the remains of the Aoiya. We're all thinking the same thing _'days, more like weeks if he survives at all'_ but the words remain unsaid long after we've left the Aoiya, long after the moon has set. They hang in the air unspoken, but weighing on our minds.

(2005)


	2. Chapter 2

Author's notes: This is the first thing I've posted in awhile indeed it's been sitting waiting to be uploaded for some time due to all sorts of things. It's not perfect heaven knows but I hope you enjoy it. Please read and review you know how we fanfic authors are with reviews!

Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin and am only borrowing the characters for some not for profit amusement.

* * *

The naked candle flame flickers in my eyes. Cold air from the open windows blows the collar of my cape against my face. The air in the room around me is mobile with the tension that surrounds both Kenshin and Aoshi.

I don't react, the worries of those around me are no concern of mine. All my attention is on the lump that is my baka deshi. He lays on a futon before me buried under a mound of old quilts. He _is_ breathing, but in a slow, faintly wheezing way, that somehow provides precious little comfort. The Kyoto police have done their best, opening up an old barrack house for us. The air is musty, heavy, and thick from years of disuse. Even after a brisk and thorough clean, you can not quite banish the scent of cobwebs and dust that accompany such things. I long for my mountain, and the cold, sharp air. For my hut, my fire and the saucer of sake that accompanies my thoughts as I gaze into the flaring red flames. Yet oddly, as restless as I am I cannot bring myself to leave. I can feel him grappling with death with every wheezing breath.

The police have tried. Laying down old tatami mats and futons on the raised timber seating area and putting braziers in the walk ways, but it doesn't quite banish the cold and the baka at my feet is as pale and washed out as over done rice. His skin is very cold to the touch and his hair against the whiteness of his skin blazes like the fire in my kiln. The deep red glow from the braziers only intensifies the contrast. I can barely tear my eyes away from it, and somewhere deep within my disquiet grows.

Every noise seems louder and sharper in the silence. Slowly in rhythm with Kenshin's breathing, there is the hiss of bare fingers against tatami. The young woman from Tokyo sits opposite me as she did when I bathed his wounds. Her face is grave and her finger tips graze the rough, worn tatami in a slow repetitive sweep. I regard her silently, watching the red light glow in her eyes and aching for a saucer of sake though I know it will taste of nothing but bitter anxiety. The shadows thrown up on the walls by the naked candle flames and braziers dance in slow formation to the rafters. The cold air whispers through the windows sweeping the stale musty air out as it passed. It makes the fine black hair around her face dance against her cheeks. I hate to admit it but I am tired.

Kenshin is like that, a most exhausting deshi if ever there was one. His very earnestness alone is tiring, but deep down I am warm with relief in a way no sake can bring. He frustrates me and irritates me no end this baka deshi of mine, but he makes me feel just a little off balance at the best of times. That brutal honesty and quiet unflinching resolve, leaves me feeling so odd. I much prefer his fits of burning, fire spitting, outrage. _He_ hasn't the faintest idea of course and that's how I prefer to keep it. My finger tips press into the groove above my elbows. Where is this doctor they promised? Some two hours have lapsed and in that time, Kaoru and I have cleansed the baka's wounds as if it were some strange and ancient ritual.

The two bowls of hot water, the two cloths, the thin piece of hollow bamboo and the fair maiden. Oh, and did I mention the handsome warrior.

Surrounded by the scent of incense I bathed those wounds, as I did before. In semi darkness and silence and as before he barely stirred. Are you even aware of us Kenshin, in that dark distant world? Are you still dreaming of _her_ you baka or is it Kaoru you see? In that dark place so far from our reach.

It was a slow silent dance between Kaoru and I. In the deep red glow from the braziers, I took one steaming damp cloth and wiped the wound. Then we traded cloths my dirty bloodied one for her hot, clean one. Over and over, while the darkness closed in, the silence pressed close, and the gaze of a hundred intent eyes burnt into our skin. Then the herbal water steaming in the bamboo pipe. The baka _should_ have screamed. When I poured it into the raw open wounds making them stream with his own hot life blood, but he was strangely, disquietingly still. The gore came away laden with burnt flesh and dirt, and tiny fragments of steel, all a poison waiting to seep into his blood. I know not if it all came away before the surge of hot herbal water. I can only hope.

His wounds are so many and varied and strange. A savage bite upon his shoulder, where the scar tissue is white and thin, deep lacerations with uneven burnt edges sweeping across his body like sword wounds, but looking nothing like them. What a strange and difficult battle he fought. The baka, surely no one else could possibly get into these messy situations the way he does.

I look at him watching the light play over his face. I listen intently to his breathing half expecting it to pause or cease. My warrior's instinct prickles in the darkness, I am aware of their eyes, watching my every move. Waiting and observing me, as if to read some silent message in my movements. Such eyes, warriors eyes that burn out of the darkness. I do not like being the centre of such intense scrutiny but I hold my emotions tight.

That baka, I could have left him with them I suppose. I know he would come to no harm and if I had, I would now be sitting comfortably before my fire, sake in hand. Though he realises it not at all there is a wall of protection, built out of love and respect surrounding him. Baka that he is, he never notices these things. I wonder sometimes at his total inability to see what is right in front of his face. He moans a little and I stiffen. I think just for a moment that it's more than a moan but perhaps I'm just tired. Everyone snaps to alertness. Hoping, but he slides back into silence. Silent but for that horrid wheezing.

(2008)


End file.
